Signal drop-outs, noticeable roof dome, hefty installation fee.
Best left to an electronics specialist or car dealer (who farms out the work).

Bottom Line

Satellite TV delivered direct to the back seat. Don't expect uninterrupted service unless you drive away from trees, bridges, and tall buildings. Best for long trips, not in-town soccer mom chauffeur duties.

JetBlue planes offer satellite TV; customers love it. KVH TracVision A5 puts DirecTV in your car; your kids will love it. A 5-inch-high dome mounts atop your SUV or van. Inside the dome is a flattened satellite dish on a motorized, self-aligning turntable. When it works, it's terrific: nearly 100 channels and just $4.99 a month on top of your existing DirecTV bill. But when driving in the suburban Northeast, we found a glitch every few minutes, ranging from a 1-second picture freeze (going under bridges) to complete signal loss (caused by trees overhead and tall buildings). Discounting the bridge hiccups, the longest uninterrupted signal was about 15 minutes.

Service is best in the Southern and Western U.S. (closer to the satellite), KVH says. But regardless of which DirecTV package you have at home, location-based programming agreements lock out most premium sports packages, premium movie networks, and major metro area local stations.

A future dish incorporating a GPS sensor could resolve that. But be prepared to add $500 to $1,000 to the cost if your car doesn't have video displays.

Our test vehicle was a Honda Element, sort of a stubby SUV with an all-rubber interior, great gas mileage, and suicide doors for the passengers (they're hinged on the back). Most of the KVH test fleet comprises the traditional full-size SUV; the dish on the Element proves you don't have to be driving Shamu, and in fact the dish could, with some work in a custom body shop, be fitted to the trunk of a big sedan and certainly to a limo. For city-and-town driving, you're going to be losing the signal so much that DirecTV is a curiosity and nothing more. But if your family or circle of friends makes long trips by an interstate where road builders did a good job clear-cutting the overhanging forest, you're in luck. With TracVision, over the river to grandma's house may be fine, but not through the woods.

KVH cut its teeth making DirecTV antennas for yachts (the antenna domes are taller than on a car so the antenna inside can tilt more and adjust for the ship pitching) and RVs (they're domed to shed signal-blocking water when the RV is parked). It has signed an agreement with Cadillac to have TracVision marketed as a dealer-installed accessory on its full-size Escalade SUV.

KVH has a couple competitors. RaySat has a similar roof-mount antenna system, SpeedRay, that receives satellite TV (DirecTV or DISH) and one version has two-way Internet capabilities. Cost would be $2,000 - $3,500. TechnoRide saw a prototype at the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show that could maintain an intermittent Internet connection. It uses a phased array antenna where individual elements tilt rather than a single antenna panel, making it capable of being theoretically lower-profile.

Winegard has a pending product called RoadTrip. And the satellite radio providers, Sirius and XM, are working on download of a handful of channels of video, but it's mostly kiddie fare.

KVH TracVision A5 Review

good

Bottom Line: Satellite TV delivered direct to the back seat. Don't expect uninterrupted service unless you drive away from trees, bridges, and tall buildings. Best for long trips, not in-town soccer mom chauffeur duties.

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About the Author

Bill Howard is the editor of TechnoRide.com, the car site for tech fans, and writes a column on car technology for PC Magazine each issue. He is also a contributing editor of PC Magazine.
Bill's articles on PCs, notebooks, and printers have been cited five times in the annual Computer Press Association Awards. He was named as one of the industr... See Full Bio

KVH TracVision A5 Review

KVH TracVision A5 Review

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